An Agnostic, Near Death and Senility

I’ve hated sleep for lying well
about my sense of seeing. I’ve hated,
not knowing trees from dreams, the smell
and sound of Autumn, smoked or baked
pecans in August, orchards’ wells
I think I knew, or know, because
I’d rearmed them.
How, I thought, can hell
take cause with sleep, and dozing sight
and smell? Now age arrives to quell
the questions,
and I hope that I’ll dream of the orchards.
which I hear now are small, are withered. An ell’s
length of time by the elms: that is more than I’d hope
as I drift off to sleep, my old ears full of bells.